From an engraving by Hall.
Off Charleston the squadron took the Susquehanna from the blockaders, and on Monday morning, November 4th, the flagship, with twenty-five other vessels of the fleet, came to anchor off the bar at Port Royal, and here they were eventually joined by all the others that survived the gale.
The storm was widespread, and the people at the North watched the clouds with an anxiety that was equalled by the hope of the South. Moreover, it was the first great expedition the nation had undertaken, and the people were unused to war.
Meantime, some one in the confidence of the government had betrayed the secret, and on November 1st, two days after the fleet sailed, the Confederate Secretary of War telegraphed a warning to the forts at Port Royal and the Confederate fleet at Savannah. The Confederate squadron was under Commodore Josiah Tattnall, he who braved the fire of the Mexican works at Vera Cruz. “His flagship consisted of an old passenger St. John’s steamer, mounting one 32-pound gun forward and one 18-pound gun aft. Then came two ancient, used-up tug-boats, each mounting one 32-pound gun; the next, a rotten North River cattle-boat, mounting one 18-pound gun; a dwarfish tug-boat from the James River, slightly armed, bringing up the rear.”
It was a fleet in which machinery and men were wholly unprotected and, for the purposes of war, was worthless. The Confederate forts were two in number—one, on Hilton Head, on the south side of the channel, called Fort Walker, and the other, on Bay Point, opposite, called Fort Beauregard. These two forts were two and five-eighths miles apart. As described by Scharf, “they were exceedingly well-built earthworks and were rather heavily armed, Fort Walker mounting 23 guns and Fort Beauregard 18, a total of 41; but 22 of these were only 32-pounders or lighter pieces, so that there were in fact but 19 guns fit to cope with the at least 100 heavy rifles and shell-guns of the Federal ships. Gen. Thomas F. Drayton was in command of both posts, with his headquarters at Hilton Head, and Col. R. M. Dunovant had immediate command at Fort Beauregard. The defences were garrisoned by about 2,000 men, but this force was very deficient in trained artillerists, and a small supply of shot and shell forbade much practice with the larger guns.”
Plan of Fort Walker on Hilton Head.
From a drawing by R. Sturgis, Jr., in 1861.
John N. Maffitt, a better authority on the Confederate side, says that “the construction of these works had been reprehensibly procrastinated until the ninth hour, when, in haste and confusion, raw troops, strangers to any ordnance above a 12-pound field piece, were hurried into the imperfectly-constructed earthworks to battle without drill or target practice against a masterly array of force.
“The excuse offered by the commanding general for neglecting to exercise and familiarize his artillerists with target-drill was the scarcity of ammunition. The commodore replied: ‘Half the allowance spent in practice will more likely insure good results for the balance in fighting.’”